Thursday, April 28, 2011

April Catch-up!

It's been a while!

April's been good to me. The season is opening up, and while it's been raining plenty, I've also have my fair share of sunshine.

So in April, Mike realized that he'd signed up for the Sun Run, but really hadn't done any training. He finished, however, with a great time! I was particularly proud that he finished 10km, when he'd admitted that he'd only ever run 7km at at time. Yay Mike! I plan on running next year when I've developedmy running skills better. after estimating how long it would take me to run 10Km for the entry form, they would have put me in the walker's category....I'm a self proclaimed very very slow runner.

Michael prepping for Sun Run. He likes cereal.

The Sun Run winner. Only 30 minutes ahead of Mike

April also brought with it Canuck Fever! Despite my hockey-free upbringing, I have managed to get in the spirit of the game, and have really enjoyed going out to watch hockey - and I've even picked up some of the rules/ can follow the puck on the tv screen! I say that, but I remarked two days ago that it only took Mike 8 years to get me there... So yesterday, I crated that little gem of a rallying poster that's up on our solarium window.

Sign on our solarium window

April was also my first "anniversary" of work at BC Children's Hospital. Yay me! Of course, that also meant yearly review time. Let's just say that it got me thoroughly stressed out and riled up. So in reply, I opted to do plenty of things very not work related. I met up with a Kamloops friend...

Friend with brand new Kilt

I also started the process of volunteering with a couple of organizations in the city. One's the Stanley Park Ecological Society (where I'll guide tween school groups as they camp out in Stanley Park), and the other's Bard on the Beach! I think both will be super fun, and give me the opportunity to meet a whole bunch of new people in the city.

And then, April marked the 5-month countown to project Ball-McBurnie. Freakout ensued. Amongst all the planning, calling, emailing, researching, money-sending, and decision-making, we made some time for fun stuff....

Meg really likes the massage chairs we tried out.

...like registering for wedding gifts. It's actually a lot tougher than you'd think, especially when you feel like you've already got pretty well everything you need and you're home's the size of a postage stamp. But we started, anyway. I also managed to secure a photographer, some sweet vintage transportation, an appointment for cake tasting, and the cutting out of some very, very expensive dupioni silk (which game me a minor anxiety attack). April was a good month for wedding planning...but there's still so much more to do!

And with April, you also have the arrival of Easter. I made the mistake of sending out paper invitations through the mail to encourage my friends to actually come to the Easter supper I was planning. Generally the return rate on an informal invitation is aboput 20%. I got closer to an 80-90% return rate ( including my parents from Kamloops who didn't get an invite at all!), which meant that I would be serving 15-17 people supper in my tiny abode! In the end, I was quite thankful that may parents came (they were a wonderful help in the kitchen for a girl who'd bever cooked a turkey before), and everyone who came brought delicious food for eating while we all watched the Vancouver Canucks play hockey (though they lost that game). It was a truly successful supper!

The only mar on the holiday was the death of my little hammie, Jude.

Hey, Jude.

Jude was about 2 and a half years old (quite aged in hampster circles). I came home from work Saturday and checked in on him (to make sure he was still breathing, which I often did even when he was just a midge of a hampster). He wasn't breathing quite right, so I though I'd pick him up and give 'em some cuddles. He was chilled. uh o. That day, he wasn't just "getting old and dying," he was actively dying. He didn't flinch when I picked him up, and he was mostly limp. At one point, I was even able to push some food out of his food pouch and out of his mouth. So I snuggled him into my sweater near my shoulder and tried to keep him warm from 11am-2:30opm. His breathing pattern changed a number of times - at one point he was only breathing 5 times/minute (less than half od what humans breathe). Poor guy. I was supposed to be sleeping off a night shift, but I was too focused on trying to make sure Jude was comfortable on what was his last day. at 2:30, Meg and my parents arrived home. I passed Jude over to Meg so I could go pee, and in that 15 seconds, he died. He died in Meg's hands while I was in the bathroom. *sigh*

That's the way things are, though. And he'll get a really nice funeral soon. I wrapped him up in paper towel, and Mike put in in a plastic bag marked "Jude" in the freezer, where he's interred until I go to Kamloops. We're going to send him off to Valhalla on a little flaming boat on the Thompson River. See you later, little peanutty buddy!

And that's April, in a nutshell! May will be fun, I know - it's my birthday coming up! the quarter century! More Spring (and hopefully less rain in Vancouver!)!